The Wau and the monster hurl themselves at one another: the tentacles clasp the metal giant without managing to tear it apart; the maw skids across the hyperchalque. The Wau pounds so hard on the organic carapace that the vibrations are deafening; he seeks within the core of its ovoid structure the cerebral mass in order to crush it between his fingers, the thing diverts its thought into its reflex neural clusters in its joints and continues a clumsy assault, and the Wau at last hurls it against a wall.
He strikes with his fists, with his feet, again and again, until it is nothing but a carpet of bloody flesh-and even then, the flesh attempts to reconstitute itself, the cells groping for one another to rebuild that cathedral of horror, but it is exhausted.
The Wau turns toward Tohil. His armor is red, dripping with blood. Favour exclaims:
-"The other five are coming straight here! Onto the command deck!"
The Wau seems stunned from the clash, but he points with his index finger toward the exit and all the sailors rush to it. Tohil casts a look of gratitude, and the Wau replies to him psychically: "Admiral, we must save what we can. Enter Drift as soon as there are no more intruders on board."
The impacts thunder, giving the impression of a missile battery charging the ship-which, moreover, alters its course. The scream of the security doors. Crushing the terminals, five new creatures, identical.
The Wau throws himself at the nearest one. The Wau Art. It collapses, screaming. Another-he seizes its maw and opens it so wide that he tears its body in two. The third arrives behind him; he seizes it and hurls it against a wall. The Wau Art upon the fourth, upon the fifth. In barely a few seconds the creatures writhe on the floor. Heaps of flesh striving to reconstitute themselves into a body while the resonant attack continues its path, cell by cell, bursting them.
The Wau is covered with blood and intestines, joints, flesh… he wipes clean his mask, though his analysis visor sees clearly through the meat.
Good Lord, Aloysius… you really did succeed in making your secret weapon. But we had agreed it would have a flaw. Where is the flaw, Sam? Has the Aleph subdued you? Why are these things so deadly? Why such zeal in your work of death?
An audible signal. The Wau clears the radar terminal of viscera and notes that Lodovico's ships are dispatching three more units. Right there, onto the deck.
The Wau takes two steps back, crouches ready to leap, and waits.
Three new impacts. Once again… the rumble of hell; this time, the security doors have given out, and the air of the deck empties with a howl, carrying away viscera and torn-out terminals. The three intruders smash through the ceiling.
Three humanoids. Two meters fifty, solid black visors, armor of gold, for two of them. The third, farther back, has a silver eye painted upon his visor.
Thus the Aleph has realized his dream. The Anti-Waus. They are replicated to perfection in physical appearance. The Aleph must have taken Alpha Empty Eyes. And for the one with the silver eye? Just so-this one takes a step backward. He observes.
The Anti-Waus advance. They are fast and strong. They strike so hard they could halt an Endymion in full charge. It is a sharp and powerful fight, yet ridiculous-hyperchalque against hyperchalque, the only thing that will eventually shatter is the Endymion, or perhaps the planet beneath.
The Wau slaps flat-handed upon the visor of one of them to subdue its control AIs. But his own AIs, scarcely reconstituted during the return voyage of the Halcyon, are surprisingly weak. He resists. Well then, so be it: the Wau concentrates and subjugates his two adversaries by thought. They are Alpha Empty Eyes, boosted with the spinal fluid of the Owls of Booz: they could dominate anyone in the universe-but not the Wau. Pointing his index finger at them, he makes them kneel, then faint. Their AIs stimulate them to awaken, so he locks their entire psyche into a mental box that will open of its own accord as soon as someone speaks to them.
After ten minutes of combat, the Wau is as exhausted as if he had labored two months without rest. Psychically, he is drained. His AIs are in bad shape. And there remains the one with the silver eye…
They face each other.
Somewhere in the entrails of the Deimos, the Transient technology machinery that maintains artificial gravity falters. Drops of blood, inert bodies, terminals and reports rise chaotically in the immense chamber already voided of atmosphere. The ship is lost, thinks the Wau. Tohil and his crew will not be able to flee.
The two combatants rise a few centimeters. There exist martial arts for zero gravity, but the most effective rely on chokeholds… which make no sense against an armored opponent. There is also the other art, called the Release, which consists in projecting oneself from a wall onto one's adversary to wound him… ideally, if the Wau could hurl him into the void, or even into orbit, the problem would be solved…
But his adversary has the same reasoning… he seizes objects, and by action/reaction, strives to gain a ledge. There comes a moment when they look at each other, both crouched against a wall. The other springs at him with surprising speed, but the Wau launches himself the other way, far from his trajectory, with such force that the metal wall collapses and goes flying into space.
They play a little at cat and mouse-the Wau tries to regain his psychic breath… and when he has just enough strength, he burns his brain and launches a murderous mental assault. Which collides with a mountain, a familiar mountain.
It is the Aleph. Within this armor. And yet, if he were here, he would have no need of armor. The other reads in his thoughts and at last he speaks, emitting a radio wave:
-"You are nearly there. You have vanquished the Anti-Waus, but they were meant for lesser prey. And there will be many of them. The one you have before your eyes exists only in two exemplars. Twice as many as necessary for the Transient creature that you are."
And the Wau understands. The Golem Gemini project. Swiftly, he hides in a mental box Dian's betrayal. Golem Gemini. Far away, on Earth, in his palace on Origin, the Aleph dominates the perfect twin of the man here in armor. He does not have all the Aleph's powers, but the latter drives his brain and muscles to their utmost, expands his psyche, analyzes faster than an AI every piece of information he receives.
-"Golem Gemini," says the Wau to surprise him.
The ruse works. His adversary's psyche seethes with rage at having his secret exposed, at imagining the prospect that his adversary is prepared and, worse, will defeat him again. In truth, he is nearly striking himself even as the Wau hurls himself upon him and pins him to the ground. But what does his adversary hope for? They are locked inside two armors inviolable and unalterable.
The violence of aggressive emotions emanating from the psychic mountain that is Golem Gemini overwhelms the Wau, who owes his concentration only to weakened support AIs. He strikes somewhere, almost blind, hoping it is upon the Aleph's automaton. But when the all-radiating rage turns to triumph, it is the Wau who lies on the floor, and the other who strikes!
One final blow and the Wau crashes through the floor and lands in the lower deck of the Endymion, in a hall where two dead sailors float, without suits, their faces covered with lacerations from exposure to the void. Maintenance corridor. Golem Gemini braces against the ceiling where he had been flung and hurls himself onto the Wau, striking again before the latter can brace himself against the ground. Yet another lower deck. The between-decks. He cannot even see him: Golem Gemini launches a third assault, and this time, the Wau plunges at three thousand kilometers per hour toward Camerone.
He turns… with a bit of luck, he will indeed land on the planet and not drift in orbit… he needs velocity to put distance and call the Halcyon, but his plan will not be feasible: with the precision of a laser and the speed of an asteroid, Golem Gemini falls upon him.
He strikes him again and sends him spinning faster, plunging toward the planet. His speed is now two thousand meters per second, and his armor glows red as they enter the mesosphere; on the horizon, he sees clearly the boundary between the black of space and the blue of an atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen.
There are no more intruders aboard the Deimos, he thinks. He orders his Halcyon to latch onto the titan of metal and to launch a Drift toward a secret world… say, Ada's. We save what we can. Let us hope they are not all dead.
Spinning, he closes his eyes and calls upon his intelligence, his AIs, to devise a winning tactic against Golem Gemini. But the latter seems to have opened too long-sealed doors of his emotions, and within the Armor, Cass cannot hold a coherent thought. She is seized, moreover, by a wave of delirious euphoria, for without solution, there is no decision, no responsibility, there is only letting it happen…
The Wau passes through the cloud layer. From outside, he looks like a drop of fire. One second later, he strikes a desert land with the kinetic power of four terajoules, the impact of a small atomic bomb, leaving a crater fifty meters wide and five deep.
He struggles to rise. He cannot and collapses. Golem Gemini falls upon him and strikes again-another small atomic bomb.
There are more mysteries on Earth and in the sky than in all philosophy, but one cannot go faster than the speed of light, one cannot be colder than absolute zero, and one cannot exceed the ultimate boundary of the universe's farthest limits. The Wau's Armor was nearly divine, but it too brushed against those limits. This is the end, Cass thinks, while Golem Gemini hammers away at her like a beast with limitless strength.
And then he lays his hand flat upon the Wau's visor. His AIs penetrate hers and take control. The Wau's Armor opens at the belly, and Golem Gemini sees Cass's slender body, her muscles, and her eyes lost to fatigue.
He raises his metal fist and is about to pierce her chest at the level of the heart.
Cass has but one second left to live. Her higher mind extends across all dimensions of time.
She thinks for an instant of the Owls of Booz, who had foretold to Lucky a kiss with her on a doorstep, and who had also foretold a meeting with Andreï and Ada in an unknown place. That will not happen in this world.
She thinks of the Transient she met in the limbo of the Blind Gods Project. He must be saved. She sends, with a powerful electromagnetic wave, the mathematical encoding of his sentient number in all directions. Perhaps one day a sentient race will capture it and know how to give him life.
She sends her research on scalar balance to all the universities through the Drift network. Not even the Aleph will oppose it.
She would like to send her discoveries on Caliban, Babel, and the Deviation Project to Andreï, but she must not let the Aleph intercept them.
And then that is all. The long, infinite second stretches out, the murderous fist descends at a very slow pace… she has almost enough time. Behind the black figure painted with a silver eye, she sees the Deimos departing into Drift… it is well. We saved what we could.
A Transient saved, a few discoveries, a few small steps in a staircase of a resistance project of which she was meant to be the keystone, and that is all. A vague friendship with Aloysius, whom she sold to the enemy; with Ada, who takes her for a sworn foe; and with Andreï, of whom she is unsure whether he is capable of love. Yes, a life can be short and it can be long. She thinks of what a long life might have been. She could have gone into the After, selected and trained the next Wau, enjoyed the pleasures of the afterlife, then merged into Pax. The After, by some magic, would have transcended and joined the mysterious cohort of Transients who are each that multiple being within the luminous unity, and from there, her whole would have joined a greater destiny still… but everything has limits, like the Armor, and one day the last star will go out and there will be nothing left. Thought itself will freeze, and even for immortals, it will be death. Thus, whether she has lived a few decades or a few billion years, the destiny is the same, and the result so meager. No impact. In the end we all die, in some whim of equality of the almighty Blind Gods.
She thinks of her childhood, when she dreamed in front of adventure serials and the Crew of Captain Wau. When she went into Titus's Alder Gardens and stroked for the first time an absolutely black cat that stayed with her the whole afternoon, and in a clearing they had attended recitations of ancient poems.
She remembers her first storm on Prospero, with a flash of white and gold that struck the tower of district one. The day before, a girl had tried to seduce her, but she had refused and regretted it. She remembers her defense on impartiality, the encrypted mail of the Order of Wau that invited her to the Stellar Fortress. Biologists explain that in the final instants our brain calls up our memories in the hope of finding a solution to a life-or-death situation, but Cassandre wants to believe the explanation of philosophers and poets, the one that says that we know it is the end and it is the hour to tell ourselves that, after all, there had been good moments.
And who knows, perhaps our memories escape us, propagate along entropic waves to one day fix themselves in the cosmic microwave background, and thus paint the great tapestry of our existences, visible to the entire universe, left there for the Transient documentalists who wish to fill the gaps left by the dead gone too soon from transcended civilizations?
The falling fist now strikes her body and sinks into the dermis and into a rib.
Cassandre has nothing left to think. Strangely, she slips into another reality, the one where the black cat stayed with her. Somewhere, in some strange land, she has a wooden house near an ocean that one can hear but not quite see. A garden of wild grass and a few maritime pines. A scent of iodine. A few wooden steps where she reads paper books about the Crew of Captain Wau. In a communal house where she has a small room with a simple table to write and read, a single bed, and-
Golem Gemini's fist has pierced through Cassandre's body, causing immediate syncope and the cessation of all vital functions. The Armor tries to repair what is irreparably broken, before giving up and dying with its bearer.
The last Wau is no more, marking with his death, as he had prophesied, the end of the Order.
Golem Gemini rises, covered in blood, and breathes inwardly, hardly believing he has finally triumphed over so formidable an enemy. Within the hyperchalque shell, Cass's body is lifeless, and she bears a hole a third of her torso's width where her heart once was.
"A good thing done," pronounces the Aleph aloud with triumph and melancholy, billions of light years away, in his throne hall.
Around him, on Earth, this vast and empty hall, and through the eyes of Golem Gemini, the rocks of an abandoned planet.